Twitter Slow To React To Crass Altered Photo Of Meghan McCain, Draws Ire

Bruce Haring

Updated Sat, September 1, 2018 at 3:41 AM UTC

An altered photo showing Meghan McCain with a gun pointed at her while she grieved at the casket of her father, Senator John McCain, stayed online for hours, despite a wave of online protests.

Meghan McCain’s husband, CBS News contributor and The Federalist publisher Ben Domenech, lashed out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for the slow response.

The offending photo was captioned, “America this one’s for you” by the tweeter, who used the handle @austindelafrog. The original photo was taken at the McCain memorial service on Aug. 29 in the Arizona Capitol building.

The photo drew hundreds of complaints, but was up for at least five hours. It finally vanished when the account holder made his Twitter account private. Twitter suspended the account the next day.

Domenech publicly tweeted to his 66.8k followers that nothing had been done. “Tell me why this is cool by you,” he asked Dorsey in a tweet, mentioning @Jack. Dorsey didn’t respond.

“It took (me) hours later tweet to finally get a reaction. Did not want to elevate it but that is what Twitter requires apparently,” Domenech wrote, adding, “Oh, and the reaction was from the guy, not Twitter. Looks like he set his account to private.”

Twitter’s rules state, ‘You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people.

“This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism. You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.”

Twitter and other social media services have been under fire for their perceived antipathy toward conservatives. Dorsey is set to testify before a Congressional committee in September on his service’s polices, among them “shadowbanning” conservative viewpoints, thereby limiting their reach. Dorsey has admitted his company is “left-leaning,” but has denied any censorship efforts.

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Twitter Slow To React To Crass Altered Photo Of Meghan McCain, Draws Ire

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